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Christmas can be such a tough time when you are separated or divorced.  Every advert seems to be about the “ideal” family and the pressure to create the perfect Christmas feels huge, especially if you have children. Perhaps you are facing your first Christmas alone or without your children for the first time or maybe…

I always find this day a bit tough. Just a bit of background: my children’s Dad chose to walk away from our marriage and our children, when they were 11 months and 2 and a quarter years old, to have a full time relationship with a woman 10 years younger than me. I find myself…

This is the third blog in our short series about the challenges of divorce when you are a parent.  In this post Kathy shares some of her top tips for coping with children post-divorce. I always write their Dad’s next contact time on the Calendar, to help the children count down to it and you try and…

We had our end of course dinner on Monday where we also invited people back from previous courses. It was so exciting to hear people’s stories of recovery. Here are some of their stories (I will write some more over the next few days). What is recovery like for you? “Letting go of the pain…

From what I read in the papers about Tom Cruz and Katie Holmes, it sounds like the lawyers have been lined up and the battle for custody of a young child is beginning. It’s the same story we’ve heard and seen many times. The divorce of two people is hard enough but for two people…

Divorce and separation, like anything emotional, can be a bit socially awkward. Friends who want to help just don’t know how. They know they can’t wave a magic wand and it is uncomfortable seeing someone you care about in distress. Sometimes that awkwardness causes friends to withdraw which can heap even more pain on an…

I used to work with a lady who would mention her divorce within a few moments of meeting someone. It was as if she couldn’t help herself, the words would just tumble out of her mouth. She had so much else to talk about, she did an interesting job, was involved with amateur dramatics and…

It’s funny what gets you through each day when things are difficult. When I was getting divorced we had friends next door who were also getting divorced. In the end because I stayed in our house I compared notes with the next-door neighbour’s wife who stayed in their house. We used to try and encourage…

My marriage ended because my husband had an affair. Although I wanted to try to make things work he didn’t. I felt so confused I just couldn’t see where things had gone so wrong. We loved each other, had fun together, rarely argued and talked about our feelings on a regular basis. I was definitely…

I love an exercise that we do on the RDS course about listening to each other which we did this week. We got 30 people to do “reflective listening”: just listen, reflect back to the speaker some of the words and thoughts that they say and then ask “what is the most important thing for…